While Donald Trump regularly blasts his critics in the media as "fake news," it's well known that he has a close relationship with the David Pecker,
CEO of American Media, parent company of the archetypal tabloid, The National Enquirer. When it comes to the TNE and his boy Pecker, Trump has
often been full of flattering
remarks
:

During primary season, TNE posted a series of fake news hit pieces against Trump's rivals. Trump would often cite these stories on the campaign trail.
One of the more memorable was when he cited TNE in an attempt to link Rafael Cruz, father of the spineless Ted Cruz, to the JFK assassination. While
he defended the absurd notion — and TNE — he of course took no blame for the words coming out of his own giant blowhole. That's okay, Ted Cruz is
such a gutless wonder that you can in fact accuse his father of being involved in the JFK assassination and call his wife ugly — and he'll still
come running like a good little lapdog.

Due to this cozy relationship with the TNE honcho and the tabloid's series of fake news attacks on his primary opponents, a lot folks started to
wonder out loud if maybe the Trump campaign wasn't colluding with TNE to smear his rivals. This was an allegation that was
vociferously denied.

Now it looks like just maybe TNE was doing the bidding of Dirty Donald, the Dishonest, and going after some other people that Donald Trump wasn't too
happy with.

President Trump’s rivalry with the hosts of “Morning Joe” turned into a cyber rumble Friday after the MSNBC stars accused the commander
in chief of blackmailing them.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski said White House staffers — senior adviser Jared Kushner was reportedly among them
— warned that the National Enquirer was preparing a damaging story about the co-hosts’ off-air relationship.

The only way to stop the article was to personally apologize to Trump for harsh comments about him on “Morning Joe.”

I can't get to the op-ed because it's behind a pay wall but the gist here is that Scarborough and Brzezinski are claiming that they were told to
apologize if they didn't want the story to be published. TNE denies this. The line
from Donald Trump is that Scarborough reached out to him and asked to have
the story killed:

Scarborough is calling Trump a liar and furthermore, is now claiming that Trump called him and bragged about having stories planted to hurt his
rivals. Ruh roh. (from the NY Daily News link):

“Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records. Also, those records show I haven't spoken with you in many months,”
he wrote. “Why do you keep lying about things that are so easily disproven? What is wrong with you?”

Scarborough earlier in the
day highlighted Trump’s friendship with David Pecker, owner of Enquirer parent American Media, Inc. “Donald Trump called me during the campaign
and bragged about his friend who runs the National Enquirer,” Scarborough said. "There were all these stories that were planted in the National
Enquirer for people who Donald Trump wanted to attack.”

The NY Daily News article also reminds readers of a WSJ story from the election that raised some eyebrows at the time but has been largely forgotten
amid the torrent of coverage of the Clownship Trump:

A Wall Street Journal story published four days before the election detailed how American Media, Inc. paid a former Playboy model $150,000 for
her story on her affair with Trump in 2006. The story never ran.

According to these officials, Kushner and Scarborough had spoken “many weeks ago” regarding a then upcoming negative Enquirer article on
Scarborough and Brzezinski. Scarborough had “calmly sought” advice from Kushner, who “recommended he speak with the president.” But
White House sources’ accounts of the conversation differed from Scarborough’s description and suggestions of more sinister interactions. No
hostile threat or attempt at blackmail was made, according to these officials. “This is getting blown up on Twitter and elsewhere as some kind of
blackmail operation,” one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, said. “The truth is far more
mundane. In this case, Joe was talking to Jared about his [bad] relationship with the president and a Enquirer hit piece he was uneasy
about.”

Oh look, it's "maybe it's his job" comment #20,000. I told you what I do for a living while you were bulls#ing in another thread, speaking
matter-of-factly in gobbledlygook about things you know nothing about.

I'm one guy posting threads. You're in every single thread critical of Trump, defending him tooth and nail to the point that you'll flat out lie to do
it. And you're not even an American. He's not your President. You can't even fall back on the excuse that you voted for him so you feel like you
should defend your choice.

Add all that up and one might be forgiven for concluding that you're the one who is simply doing his job.

If the allegation is proven true, yeah. Is it true? Trump doesn't own TNE but he is friends with the owner. They would have to prove that Donald
requested TNE to print the story.

It'll be interesting to see if Joe Scarborough coughs up the proof. I think to prove blackmail, it wouldn't matter if he could actually make good on
the threat. Then again Joe could be pulling a "Trump tapes?"

This content community relies on user-generated content from our member contributors. The opinions of our members are not those of site ownership who maintains strict editorial agnosticism and simply provides a collaborative venue for free expression.